Audio mixing half of a live concert DVD for the “Celebrate Recovery” program at Saddleback (a megachurch in Orange County). It sounds beautiful…I’m really proud of the mixing/mastering job I did on that project.

Another book — cover design and interior design — for longtime client Asian Access. The book drops May 1, so I can’t post pictures yet. But it’s beautiful, and will be really well-received.

Continued work with The Baseball Reliquary, including video from their annual Shrine of the Eternals induction ceremony event and continued support for their website. Let me be clear: it was difficult to become a member of the Reliquary — an association funded entirely by member dues — before our redesigned site launched. The new site has paid for itself in new memberships that have been purchased over the website. Wow!…absolutely wonderful.

Photography for the amazing JD Hinton and Phil Bloch (we’re developing a new site for Phil Bloch). These musicians are amazing, and I’m privileged to be working with such incredible talent…and all-around great guys.

You did see the game I designed, right? Rocks and Docks keeps plugging along; it’s used in treatment facilities in group therapy. We had a fun time developing, testing, revising, and assembling that game.

We’re helping out good friend and colleague (and amazing product designer) Dave Schultze launch a Kickstarter campaign for his new game. I just spent part of last weekend filming some footage for the Kickstarter video.

I don’t even think this covers half of what we’ve been working on. And I can’t wait to show you more: another trip to Asia where we’ll be producing all of the onsite video, several more websites that we are currently developing, more music and sound cues, and the list goes on…

My signoff for a form of pages (8 out of the 24) that go into the magazine

Today I got to spend the day at The Dot Printer, one of my favorite printers in the world. I spend a whole day here every quarter, checking the magazine that I art-direct for The Planetary Society as it is going through the press. Why do I spend a whole day watching paper run through the press? Because I only want top-notch-quality for my clients. By being on-site, I can ensure that everything comes off press looking exactly how I intended it to…down to the color of that dot that shows where they landed on Antarctica (check out this quarter’s issue for a really fun look at research being done on Antarctica that simulates the environment astronauts might find themselves in on Mars).

I have lots to talk about, and I think I’ll be on here more often this year than last — telling all of you about my projects and all the opportunities to see our work pop up around town. I also want to talk about some of the things that we at HCS care about — education, science, and the technology that continues to drive our industry.

One of the “perks” of working with international organizations is that — sometimes — you are needed for filming overseas. Last week, I conducted interviews and filmed b-roll for Asian Access at a conference in Jakarta. I have worked with them for twenty years, and have traveled many times with their people, filming both documentary-style footage of relief work and interviews at conferences.

This event posed a few new challenges. I was not given an area in which to film, so I decided to use my hotel room (keeping it spotless!); it is relatively quiet in a hotel room, and I could control more variables. (Outdoor shoots proved sketchy because South Asia rainstorms kept pouring at the most inopportune times.) The next issue: most hotel rooms don’t have much light. Even though I have never been to Jakarta, I was able to locate a local production company [Amazing Productions] that brought in a pair of 4-bank fluorescent lights for the week:

Like my hotel room? We dressed every corner of the room I could think of to get different setups for different interviews.

I wanted fluorescent because I don’t like doing interviews with hot lights, and KinoFlo’s can be fitted with daylight bulbs so that I can use both the lights and exterior light from windows. We needed the lights because I would be filming interviews at all hours of the day and night, so we needed to be able to blast light into the room at any time. Here are just a few of the looks that I was able to get:

I am happy with the setups, although I would have loved to have more time and more room. More room enables me to separate the subject from the background more easily; as you can see from the above photos, though, I was able to create quite a bit of separation even in a small (325sf) room.

While traveling, I try to “go light,” even with photo gear. So I left my camera slider and mini jib at home, as well as my Steadicam Merlin and my large Cartoni tripod. All of these are great tools, but for the footage I would be shooting, I couldn’t justify the extra weight. Here is what I ended up with:

Canon EOS 7D. I have shot so many stills — and video — with this camera that it has paid for itself over and over. Sometimes used as a b-camera for this project, but mostly stills on this trip. Took along a 70-200 lens as well as a 24-55.

Zoom H4n recorder. I used this for years as the primary audio recorder — when I was shooting with DSLR cameras. Now it serves as backup, and I can also do audio recordings for sessions that I’m not filming (which we did on this trip).

Two little lights that I got off of Kickstarter called The Kick that are awesome for an accent light, or even a quick interview using the diffuser.

I’ve made no bones about the fact that I love music. My entry into filmmaking came only after an internship at a North Hollywood recording studio brought my recording chops up, and then I used that skillset to start location recording, and then sound editing, picture editing, post production supe duties, and finally producing…but I digress.

I’ve been playing music since I was five years old. First piano and drums (orchestra percussionist for five years), then classical guitar for a while, then cello for a few years, voice lessons in high school, and on-the-job accompanist training in college. So it should come as no surprise that my current business has a soft spot for musicians.

What does that mean? Well, I still need to make money. But I can cut deals that benefit an artist or label because of my varied skillset. I can do your product packaging, but I can also work on your website and advertising. We can work on a music video, brilliant photography, and even do some recording. Later on I’ll show you a few examples.

But first: the newest project that I’m working on is with a fantastic San Antonio-based artist, Matt McCormack. Check out this guy’s amazing songwriting. We met through a friend, and I played onstage with him a few months ago when he traveled to L.A. at Genghis Cohen (fantastic venue, and fantastic restaurant too).

So when Matt asked me to add some keyboard parts to his new recording project, we embarked on a long-distance back-and-forth to find the right sounds for these new songs. Here are the first two:

MUSIC PRODUCTION

The aforementioned keyboard tracks for Matt McCormack’s new album were recorded in my studio, and then added to the mix by Matt’s amazing production team in San Antonio — an engineer, mixer, and mastering engineer.

Check out my “audio” page for more examples of my experience working as a composer, engineer, and producer.

WEBSITES

VIDEO PRODUCTION

All of these videos were shot and produced by Hearken Creative:

LOGOS

I was a founding member (keyboards again) of a Doobie Brothers tribute band, and developed an “homage” logo for that band:

As you can see, we are a one-stop shop for marketing musical acts. Does this limit us? No! We are still working on communications and marketing for pharmaceutical companies, nonprofits, colleges, museums, and more. But it’s fun to look at one market segment, and see how much incredibly fun material we have produced.

I dislike the question “Are you busy?” — because I don’t know how to answer it. I don’t crave “busy-ness” — being busy just for the sake of being busy. However!…I love filling my life with experiences. Over the past decade, between my wife and I, we have added a teaching credential, several certifications, graduating from Cal State L.A., thousands of miles of travel for both business and pleasure, and — as of a few days ago — not one but two teenagers in the house! (Ooops — I forgot — now I’m directing a church choir too.) And that’s on top of the day-to-day running of a household and business.

The point is this: I love learning. Lately I have been reading Simon Sinek’s Start With Why (unsure if I agree with his premise, but still interesting), a bunch of blogs on HTML5 and e-mail deliverability, someone’s senior thesis comparing the Contemporary Christian worship/music industry to European Communism, and a bunch of online articles on both marketing and studio music production. I also try and read at least one work of fiction per month. Tonight I’ll be a chaperone for a children’s choir while they rehearse with Gustavo Dudamel at Disney Hall. All of this activity keeps my mind constantly seeing new things, new solutions, new issues, new opportunities. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

But would I jump at helping you out with a new project tomorrow? Of course! Give me a call.

Busy-ness aside, here are some new projects that just launched this week:

Matt Frazier website. Matt and I have been friends for over 20 years, and when it was time for him to get a website makeover, he came to me with very specific hopes: short, easy-to-navigate, boldly individual, and something that he could continue to update on his own. We developed a one-page website out of relatively-simple HTML5, and Matt has already done a bunch of updates himself since it launched a few days ago. Matt has been in the music industry for a long time (and he’s a fantastic musician himself!), and has a deep understanding of music theory, money — as it relates to music, and recording/producing. We wish him all the best with the new website, and a new stage in his career.

Jon Leonoudakis website. Jon and I have worked on several films together — both behind the camera, and in the marketing department. I shot footage for his award-winning documentaries “The Day the World Series Stopped” and “Hano! A Century In the Bleachers“, and then designed the packaging and websites for both films when principal photography was wrapped. So, when Jon needed a new website, he contacted me and we worked out a deal that was win-win for everyone. Like Matt, Jon was interested in having something that he could continue to update himself, so Hearken Creative set up a robust WordPress site where everything is modular, and Jon can continue to grow the site as his production company grows. We’re excited to see where Jon goes next with his unique brand of storytelling, and awesome producing style!

Other projects that have been happening recently:

I designed much of the collateral artwork for The Planetary Society’s spacecraft-building Kickstarter campaign, and they have almost completed fulfilling all of the “rewards” for the campaign. They also have recently named the new spacecraft — which will hopefully launch later this year — Lightsail2. You can see many of my photographs in the updates to the campaign.

Kendra Celise continues to post music videos from the live studio session we filmed at my studio. Over the course of six weeks, these videos have given her several thousand new views, and helped her launch her upcoming EP and her newest single “Admit It Baby” — we love her music, and hope that the launch is wildly successful!

Finally, I have been going back to revisit the footage that I shot during my two trips to northern Japan after the tsunami. We only publicly released one video from that footage — the wildly-popular “Nozomi Project” mini-documentary — and I’d like to see if I can show more of how local churches in Japan have been assisting with the re-building…both physically and emotionally. The people that I have met on my many trips to Asia are held in a special place in my heart, and it makes me happy when people see what great community-building work is going on there. So I hope to have some new Japan videos out soon — maybe even to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the tsunami in a few weeks.

So yes…we’re busy. But not in a bad way. And do you need a project like one of these for yourself of your company? Give me a call — I’m sure we can get something wonderful going. I’m never too busy to sit down and talk with you.

It’s always fun seeing the fruition of months of work. We get to do it every quarter, with The Planetary Society’s magazine The Planetary Report. Because I am a stickler for details and always want to see projects through to the very end, I spend a day in Orange County at the printshop doing press checks and ensuring that each magazine prints perfectly. (They print over 50,000 copies of the magazine, on a big web press. It’s a fun process to watch.)

This type of work is not what most people think of when they hire a creative director or marketing manager, but quality counts. My aim is to make every project we produce a home-run for the client. It’s all about matching the right message with the right media — be it a website, or magazine, or brochure, or e-mail blast.

Over the next few weeks we will have a new website launch to feature, some more video projects, and more! Stay tuned…

We keep pressing forward on many projects simultaneously. The newest video clip is the first of a series that we recorded and filmed in my studio for singer/songwriter Kendra Celise.

Kendra sent a few sample YouTube videos so we could get a feel for what she wanted, and we spent the better part of a day filming her performances. A new camera — the Sony PXW-W70 — was used for this shoot, as well as some of our amazing Michael Joly-modified microphones. The camera was mounted on a mini-jib so that we could move around smoothly throughout the song.

The rest of the videos will drop over the coming weeks. We had fun on this project, and believe the final product will help Kendra market her new EP successfully. Congrats to Kendra!

This past year has been filled with learning experiences, great projects for new clients, and a host of milestones. We’re looking forward to an even more exciting 2016, and can’t wait to show you what is coming through the pipeline at Hearken Creative. But for now,

I’m so very excited for this issue of The Planetary Report. We have a fantastic assortment of gorgeous photography, and some really interesting stories on the history of The Planetary Society. It’s a bit late (this is the September issue!), but I’m happy that this one is coming off the presses today. Check it out!

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Hearken Creative

Through Hearken Creative, Loren A. Roberts works with clients worldwide to create marketing that delivers measurable results. The medium is secondary, be it video, audio, web, e-mail, or printed material. Loren continues to push the envelope for his clients -- all with return on investment in mind. Not a design studio and not a production company, Loren is guiding Hearken Creative to foster a professional synergy that creates memorable marketing plans to deliver results.